


the gravity in your shoulders

by Starships



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Angst, F/M, Lightwarden Au, Lightwarden PoV, MayU Fic Exchange, Monster sex, So much angst, With hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:35:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23905522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starships/pseuds/Starships
Summary: A blade has a certain universal utility, it’s true. The thin edge gleams in a way that is recognized by the hindbrain; survival jolts within her as she looks at it and she knows,this can hurt.But she can hurt too. Her wings spread and it’s the good kind of ache; her feathers stretch in the sun and they, too, can cut.
Relationships: Aymeric de Borel/Warrior of Light, Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch/Warrior of Light
Comments: 13
Kudos: 53
Collections: May-U Fic Exchange 2020





	the gravity in your shoulders

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shoutz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shoutz/gifts).



> For Shoutz. <3 <3 I hope this crunchbar is to your liking, doll. 
> 
> This fic contains dubcon if you squint at it with a modern lens; there are power differentials at play here. Please know the interaction is consensual <3 Just... monstery.

Here you are feeling gravity

in your shoulders and the ache

deep inside, reminding you that life

all comes down to this:

It's not what you have known,

but what you have forgotten.

**A Loss of Memory,** James Langlas

She looks at the knife before her, not entirely sure if she remembers what it is.

A blade has a certain universal utility, it’s true. The thin edge gleams in a way that is recognized by the hindbrain; survival jolts within her as she looks at it and she knows, _this can hurt._

But she can hurt too. Her wings spread and it’s the good kind of ache; her feathers stretch in the sun and they, too, can cut.

She shakes her great head and light cascades from her jowls. Her feathers soak in warmth.

She basks, for the day is beautiful. He’ll be back soon, anyway.

The dagger drops from her talons and is forgotten -- if, that is, it was remembered to begin with.

* * *

_Her time at Aymeric’s bedside was fraught. The stubborn fool wouldn’t stop working even when he needed Estinien’s support to stand, and she would have chased him from his own study if she hadn’t been positive he would bleed out along the way._

_Just an assassination attempt, he had said._

_Just a knife._

* * *

She finds gold the most soothing. He sings her lullabies -- maybe that’s what gold is.

His eyes are like the sun, like the sky, and when he turns his face upon her and she is graced with his love, the roiling inside of her skin calms.

He’s been so distant, lately. He is so much smaller than she is but she used to be able to curl her hind legs around him, cradle them both in her wings, and he would allow it. He cupped her face tenderly, even -- brushed the backs of his claws against her cheek. They felt like river stones.

When he looks at her now, his lip trembles, or he is angry. She wants to fix it, but she knows she cannot understand. Not really. 

He looks away before she can see starlight fall from his eyes.

The dunes are heated to scalding today, and her wings are thoroughly sunned. The excursion to the desert is a rare treat -- he had said she looked cold. She remembers what it was like to ask him questions. This time, as one is on the tip of her tongue, she succumbs instead to sleep.

* * *

_Her heart beat out of her chest when he invited her to dinner, and it thundered a stampede over her fallen body when he kissed her._

_No man should have a mouth this plush. Such wickedness he pulled from her, that shining line of saliva between their starving mouths as he took that beautiful feast and shoved it to the ground with her body, laying her across his table as though she had been the meal printed on his invitation in perfunctory script all along._

_His tongue lapped greedily at her cunt, and she came again, and again, and again. The impeccable skin of Ser Aymeric de Borel had been shed and only a beast was left behind, a beast stuffing her full of as many fingers as he could fit and sucking her nectar away like he would a peach in summer._

_He never asked for anything for himself. He only asked to ruin her._

* * *

Sometimes, she is small.

She isn’t sure why. Her body is just… less.

These are the days he is most excited to see her. Her wings are gone, her scales have flaked off until what is beneath is almost recognizable. Her mouth is smaller with less teeth. And normally she likes teeth! The tear of flesh in her maw feels _good_ like nothing else does, except maybe his skin when he touches her. 

With fewer teeth, she can talk back. Well, sounds fit inside of her mouth better with fewer teeth, anyway.

He touches her more when she is less sharp.

The silver of a blade flashes through her mind, eyes as blue as the Doman sky or Ruby Sea or the frayed edges of her soul, but he cups her cheek and kisses her and the gold of him pours out into her eager mouth. Tendrils of shadow unfurl behind him, and she knows he is hungry today.

Just like that, the blade is gone. Memories are so hard -- frail, gossamer things she tears through with her too large body. She wishes--

But she gets hungry, too. The hollowness inside is something she understands. The pit, the need.

She cracks the light open for him and lets him inside.

* * *

The first time they joined he was human, and she remembers a desperate howling wind behind him sundering the very city where her body had broken. She was too large, too unwieldy; his sorrow would drown them both but her sharp edges would bleed him dry first.

He didn’t care. He wanted her to hurt him.

She tried so hard not to.

Now, it is more common that he is honest with her. He sheds himself and rises in darkness, enormous talons caging her throat without any pressure, amethyst and cerulean colliding into a violent storm that sets her heart at ease. There is only the two of them, joined within the eye. The calamity she can feel outside them no longer exists.

The thrust of bodies into each other is still familiar. His cry as he fills her is, ultimately, familiar. The swell of waves as she peaks around him is a home she has been to before. 

Her instincts say mate, fuck, breed; what is left of her heart cries love instead.

* * *

_Aymeric’s laugh--_

* * *

He keeps her here, in their home. It is a colossal and empty city, and when she is big she can look inside the windows and see who used to live there. Sometimes, someone is even home! Tall (well, not to her) willowy beings of shadow and light and music. No one has said hello back yet; when she is large enough to see them, she also has too many teeth. No matter how empty this makes her feel, she cannot empty her mouth, so she flies to the next window to see who lives inside.

* * *

_The scar on his right knuckle--_

* * *

He won’t let her out.

She thinks a prison should be painful, but he is so kind. So gentle with her. They had fought once, when she tried to escape and fly to the surface of the sea. The sun teases her, rippling golden silk in the breeze. She wants to hold it in her fingers.

His fury was terrible. The world shook, and spears of his aether shot through her wings and pinned her to the building’s stairs, the one in the middle. They are broad and shining and golden.

She remembers walking them, when she had feet.

“ _Hades!_ ” she had shrieked in fury, a terrible wail that tore him to pieces and brought him to his knees. He went to her. He cradled her and sobbed, a harsh braying sound that stuttered from his chest. He was so slight compared to her, but she had never felt smaller. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, while she could. She curled a bloody wing around them both, and wished she could remember the word that had hurt him so.

“I know,” he said, and even that simple sound was a broken one.

She never left his side again.

* * *

_How much time must pass before you forget how your beloved takes their tea?_

_How much time before they forget you prefer cream?_

* * *

Once, they had visitors. People so familiar her soul cried out and ran to them as the haven they were: her family. 

They said they would not fight her, which she thought was silly. Of course they wouldn’t! She loved them, and they loved her. 

It didn’t matter how hungry she was. She didn’t care.

They shouted with her keeper for what felt like hours. Gnashed their teeth. She watched, shifting and antsy -- why couldn’t she reach out? Why was her mouth too full to tell them? 

They left without touching her, and she felt it as a physical pain. He, too, kept himself from her; his hurt was so great he wouldn’t even gift her with his soothing golden eyes. He wouldn’t sing.

Amaurot was quiet for weeks, after that.

The void howled inside her, and she _knew_ \-- too sharp, _too sharp, she was--_

Just a knife.

But it cut everything that mattered.

* * *

_Does he remember that you used to snore?_

_Does he still tease you in his mind, flick your nose and call you_ cute _, of all things?_

  
  
  


_Does he love someone else?_

_Are they good to him?_

* * *

The world broke into uncountable pieces and put itself back together again six more times, and every time he came home to her. His steps were slower, his head hung low.

“Soon,” he promised her. It was such a sweet word. Soon.

She has always loved his promises.

“Our great work is at an end,” was what he said after the sixth. “One more rejoining, and you will be free.”

_What about you?_ she wanted to ask him. But she had more teeth than ever, and words were not for her.

_How can I make you happy?_

Instead she pulled him into her nest and kept him warm.

It was her last memory -- but it was a good one.

When he killed her, she was content. She did not see what came after.

* * *

_My dearest,_

_Do you remember when the world was broken?_

_When we were less?_

_It did not feel less, to be in your arms in Ishgard. To be fourteen jagged pieces, scattered to the wind but held together by your hands. Nay, I felt as though I were a mountain -- Immovable, if only I could set my eyes upon you._

_I suppose we are all larger than mountains now._

_My Warrior of Light._

_My love._

_A man has come to me and told me where to find you. I did not believe him, at first, but he knew such things about you. He says you will be weak, newly reborn; pray, forgive my doubts, my love. I have never known you to be such._

_I have a myriad of questions but no time to ask them -- who could wait, when you are only moments away? I feel every second beneath my skin._

_I am coming to find you._

_Soon, my heart._

_Soon._


End file.
